01. Time Of My Life
02. The Place Where We Belong
03. Whisper
04. When You Call My Name
05. Finally
06. Prelude
07. Distant Melody
08. The Sword
09. Queen Of Rain [Roxette cover]
10. Sweet Dead Innocence
11. Poison Paradise
12. In The Edge Of Sanity
13. The Only One
14. Chasing Dreams [bonus]
15. Face It All [bonus]

If you thought that Brazil had nothing to offer the world besides coffee, Adriana Lima, and The City Of God, then you couldn't have been more wrong. Brazil has also given the world a wonderful symphonic metal band named Hydria. Their second album titled Poison Paradise is - with the possible exception of the cover art - an improvement in all areas.

Hydria's music in general is pretty easy to listen to, but it is by no means commercial or cheap. They simply create exactly the type of music that they like and for those lucky people who are into this kind of symphonic metal, Hydria are one of the best obscure bands to discover. Hydria are not terribly original, but nor do they get mixed in with all of the other female fronted symphonic metal groups. They stand out for several reasons. Playing mostly easy-on-the-ears symphonic power metal, they surprise their listeners by throwing in some quite enjoyable heavy riffs, which work especially well because of the contrast between those heavy riffs and the heavenly voice of their leading lady Raquel.

Raquel is another reason why Hydria stands out, she is very good vocalist indeed. Her voice is something like a combination of Andrea Dwätlyer from Lunatica and Anette Olzon from Nightwish and a great combination it is. Fans of the aforementioned bands will surely appreciate her style and sound, but the sometimes overwhelming sweetness might be a turn off for those who prefer more power and aggression from their vocalists. Marcelo's growls have improved significantly, but they are only present on two of the songs. The contrast between Marcelo's growls and Raquel's clean vocals does add another dimension to Hydria's music, but this dimension isn't really necessary. The growls are used so seldom that they will not convince any admirers of that vocal technique to take an interest in Hydria and they might alienate those potential listeners who would prefer clean vocals only.

The band's songwriting abilities are very well demonstrated by every song: the melodies are catchy and very memorable. Also proving their abilities is Hydria's cover of Roxette's "Queen Of Rain", which stands out as one of the best ever covers by a symphonic metal band. Instead of just throwing some synthesizers into the mix, Hydria take the song and make it sound like it was written by them in the first place. That takes some skill.

Other than its lack of real originality, a weakness of the album is that it lacks a true "killer" track (though "Finally" might be it for some folks), the kind of song that makes you fall in love with a band on the first listen. Hydria haven't yet attempted to create the kind of ten minute epics that Nightwish, Epica and the late Dreams Of Sanity are known for. The lack of such an epic track is however somewhat made up for by the overall quality of the album.

Hopefully this will not be the last we hear of Hydria.

Performance:	9
Songwriting:	7
Originality:	5
Production:	8